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Hello, around 300 BC in Alexandria, one of the most important works in mathematics appeared.

We know it as Euclid's elements, and it became so influential that it's deeply ingrained

in everything mathematicians to do even now.

Some of the ideas are revelation.

One of my guests today likens its proof on prime numbers to the discovery of the atom.

Bertrand Russell wrote of Euclid's elements, at the age of 11, I not imagined there was anything

so delicious in the world. In the elements for the first time, there were logical arguments

for why some mathematics would always work in any situation.

It became the core of the teaching and understanding of the subject for over 2,000 years,

right down to the school days of many of our listeners.

We made with me to discuss Euclid elements are Marcus Chisotoy, Professor of Mathematics and

Simone Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford,

Sarafina Cuomo, reader in Roman history at Birkbeck, University of London,

and June Barrow Green, Professor of the History of Mathematics at the Open University.

Marcus Chisotoy, when the elements emerged, how well establishes mathematics in 300 BC?

I think that mathematics have been being done for, know since 2000 BC you see Egyptians

Babylonians doing a sort of mathematics but it's a what we see emerging here is a very

different sort of mathematics so they were doing very practical things. They were

solving particular equations, finding particular examples of Pythagoras'

...